This article summarizes publicly known attacks against block ciphers and stream ciphers. Note that there are perhaps attacks that are not publicly known, and not all entries may be up to date.
Table color key
No known successful attacks — attack only breaks a reduced version of the cipher
Theoretical break — attack breaks all rounds and has lower complexity than security claim
Attack demonstrated in practice
Best attack
This column lists the complexity of the attack:
If the attack doesn't break the full cipher, "rounds" refers to how many rounds were broken
"time" — time complexity, number of cipher evaluations for the attacker
"data" — required known plaintext-ciphertext pairs (if applicable)
"memory" — how many blocks worth of data needs to be stored (if applicable)
"related keys" — for related-key attacks, how many related key queries are needed
Common ciphers
Key or plaintext recovery attacks
Attacks that lead to disclosure of the key or plaintext.
Linear cryptanalysis.[7] In addition, broken by brute force in 256 time, no later than 1998-07-17, see EFF DES cracker.[8] Cracking hardware is available for purchase since 2006.[9]
2113 time, 232 data, 288 memory; 64-bit block is vulnerable to SWEET32 attack.
2016
Extension of the meet-in-the-middle attack. Time complexity is 2113 steps, but along with proposed techniques, it is estimated to be equivalent to 290 single DES encryption steps. The paper also proposes other time–memory tradeoffs.[10] SWEET32 attack demonstrated birthday attacks to recover plaintext with its 64-bit block size, vulnerable to protocols such as TLS, SSH, IPsec, and OpenVPN.[4]
The cipher used in 3G cell phone networks. This attack takes less than two hours on a single PC, but isn't applicable to 3G due to known plaintext and related key requirements.[11]
220 time, 216.4 related keys(95% success probability)
2007
Commonly known as PTW attack, it can break WEP encryption in Wi-Fi on an ordinary computer in negligible time.[12] This is an improvement of the original Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir attack published in 2001.[13]
ECRYPT II recommendations note that, as of 2012, 80 bit ciphers provide only "Very short-term protection against agencies".[20] NIST recommends not to use Skipjack after 2010.[21]
^"DES Cracker Project". EFF. Archived from the original on May 7, 2017. Retrieved August 26, 2015. On Wednesday, July 17, 1998 the EFF DES Cracker, which was built for less than $250,000, easily won RSA Laboratory's "DES Challenge II" contest and a $10,000 cash prize.
^Meiqin Wang; Xiaoyun Wang; Changhui Hu (2009-08-23). "New Linear Cryptanalytic Results of Reduced-Round of CAST-128 and CAST-256". Selected Areas in Cryptography. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 5381. pp. 429–441. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-04159-4_28. ISBN978-3-642-04158-7. S2CID35612393.